On Oct. 30, 1922 one Benito Mussolini, journalist, became Premier of one Italy.
Today other second-rate Powers still remain what they were then. But in 13 swift years the once obscure Italian editor has carried his once negligible country up & up to the ultimate fulcrum on which Europe's future turns. This may be II Duce's unlucky 13th year, but with the hammer blows of 52 nations ringing out in an anvil chorus of sanctions last week, it was significant to the point of paradox that not Italy but Ethiopia was still being called "the underdog."
1935 Victorians. The most fateful fact about Benito Mussolini has always been, in crises, the conviction of his foes that he must be bluffing and therefore that his bluff can be called. All his life II Duce Mussolini has rattled and rattled before he struck. The Italian Cabinet against which he launched his March on Rome was sure he was bluffing. After ignoring the bluffer until too late, it failed utterly to buy off Editor Mussolini by offering him the prize of a Ministry without portfolio.
Though the lira is a managed currency, II Duce has kept it on his technical gold standard through eight long years of rumors that he was bluffing and might be expected to devalue any day. To frosty bankers it must eternally seem like bluffing when a fire-eating politician shouts at the top of his lungs, screams in headlines and has cut into a monument at Pesaro: "We will defend the lira to the last breath, to the last drop of blood!"
To the British Government the present shedding of Italian blood to secure space and raw materials for an overcrowded nation has looked like the Dictator's latest bluff. And a bluff is something that can be called. To Italians, who by this time know II Duce thoroughly, the hypothesis that he might be bluffing about Ethiopia has not to this day occurred. They can go as far back as 1919 and trace through his whole subsequent career as Dictator the same keynote of Empire-building he struck then:
Imperialism is the eternal and immutable law of life. It is, at bottom, nothing other than the need, the desire and the will to expansion which every individual, and every live and vital people, possesses.
In essence, this was the keynote of Britain's Victoria more than half a century ago. The great Queen, with her pride in British valor and her joy that backward peoples should have the benefit of British rule, has a superficially different but basically similar counterpart in the Dictator of 1935, with his rousing trumps to Fascist valor and his real conviction that Ethiopians are savages who can properly be brought under Italian rule.*
Mistakes & Sins. In Rome last week, aside from the cares of war (see p. 14), the Dictator busied himself daily grappling with the awful risks he runs by steering a Victorian course in 1935. At his very elbow last week was the League of Nations in the person of grey-haired, ruddy-cheeked Sir Eric Drummond. As Secretary General of the League from its founding until he resigned amid widespread regret two years ago, this British Ambassador to Rome is ripe with "The Spirit of Geneva," "The Spirit of Locarno" et al.
As they faced each other across the great oak table in Palazzo Venezia last week neither Sir Eric nor the Dictator harbored illusion. The sins and the mistakes of Italy's Victorianism were transparent.
Mistake No. 1: In 1923 when Mussolini had been Premier but a few months, Italy joined France in sponsoring Ethiopia for membership in the League. This piece of flattery to a savage Empire was the opening move in long years of attempted peaceful, economic penetration of Ethiopia. Felicity touched its high when the present Emperor Haile Selassie visited King Vittorio Emanuele III in Rome and was showered with lavish gifts, including some small dogs which still yap at Addis Ababa. Forgotten today is the French reason for having initiated Ethiopia's blossoming into "nationhood" by joining the League: France thought Britain intended to seize Ethiopia and hoped by this means to block the seizure.
Mistake No. 2: Although the history of Ethiopia teems with instances in which peaceful white penetrators have been duped, swindled, robbed of concessions and even murdered, Il Duce made the mistake of attempting to do 20th Century business with Ethiopia.
Mistake No. 3: When Ethiopia's wily Emperor ran true to immemorial form, balking Italian concessionaires and bilking II Duce with the too-shrewd tricks of an Afric people's despot, Dictator Mussolini made the cardinal mistake of not educating world public opinion by a campaign of publicity such as Germany has waged for years, yowling from every vantage point how she has been wronged.
Instead II Duce committed his Sin No. 1. Nauseated by what seemed to him the futility of the League of Nations and the many failures of international conferences to settle anything, the Dictator made a separate and sinful pact with France, which sold him for a definite quid pro quo the right, so far as France was concerned, to exercise a "free hand" in Ethiopia (TIME, Jan. 14, 21).
This sin against the Covenant of the League of Nations was committed with the nation which had always been the Covenant's leading champion, France. It was compounded at Stresa later, when Mussolini and Laval encountered no rebuke or opposition to their public sinning from James Ramsay MacDonald, then British Prime Minister, and Sir John Simon, then Foreign Secretary (see p. 18).
Mussolini's Sin No. 2 in the present crisis, his use of war as an instrument of national policy, similarly depends upon the Briand-Kellogg Pact of 1928. From the vantage ground of these two lofty technicalities, Sir Eric Drummond, the Ambassador of Victoria's grandson, was entitled to gaze reproachfully upon Benito Mussolini last week and did in fact so gaze.†
Sin No. 3 is that Italians have been ordered to fight and kill. Benito Mussolini knows that for this there is no excuse, if it be "murder," but if ecclesiastical authorities decide he is making "war" they may be expected, as in the case of all previous wars, to decide that it is a "just war" and no sin.
"Wise & Faithful." Sir Eric, as he and the Dictator talked, received an impact so powerful that next day New York Timesman Ferdinand Kuhn Jr. cabled from London: "Last night the most urgent kind of warning reached the British Government from wise, faithful Ambassador Drummond to the effect that Mussolini was convinced Britain intended to make war upon him and therefore had poured new troops into Libya"—i.e. opposite the British position in Egypt
Rome heard that Premier Mussolini, while still agreeable to maximum League exploitation for electioneering purposes, and while still standing on his public pledge not to reply to merely economic and fiscal sanctions with acts of war, demanded last week public retraction from London of what virtually the whole European Press was saying, namely that 147 British warships anchored on Italy's war flanks meant in substance: "Stanley Baldwin is out for Benito Mussolini's hide and that means the Dictator is through." This British massing of war boats, the Italian Government spokesman pointed out, was ordered by London on its own, has never been requested or endorsed by the League, and occurred prior to sanction activity. If it, too, was electioneering, II Duce was prepared to stomach a good deal, but he blazed at Sir Eric that from London there was a minimum which Italy also must obtain.
Another British Ambassador and another Premier, "Honest Broker" Pierre Laval, presently haggled out this minimum in Paris (see p. 15), but the urgent warning Sir Eric flashed to London had direct, immediate results. In London spade-bearded Italian Ambassador Dino Grandi was invited to Whitehall. There soothing assurances were poured into his ear by British Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare. Next a public speech was made by Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in which he declared that no British Government hostility exists toward Italian Fascism and none toward the Dictator.
Essence of Fascism. If the oft-told life of Benito Mussolini and the much-headlined events of his 13 years as Dictator are not easily recalled in an ordered pattern, passion is to blame. Since 1922 nobody has been able to write impartially about the man who made Dictatorship what it is today. Currently the nearest approach to such an analysis is Mussolini's Italy by Dr. Herman Finer of the University of London, a useful work since its author has just spent a year in Italy and tried to be fair (Holt, $3.75).
This Londoner concludes after much anxious research that "Fascism is Mussolini." In something between relief and desperation at his inability to formulate the essence of Fascism which so many Italians feel they have grasped by instinct, Scholar Finer adds: "The Fascist system depends on a genius, and with his passage it must pass."
Genius Mussolini, as studied by Scholar Finer in Rome last year: "First, then, Mussolini has a profound knowledge of men. . . . His penetration is extremely subtle: 'refined' as the Continental idiom has it. This does not apply to one special section of the people, like the peasantry among whom he was born, but to all. . . . The Senate, whose seats are filled by the grey-bearded 'personages,' is addressed [by Mussolini] with the gravity of an elder statesman; the Chamber with tempestuous fervor, and 'high inspiration' and humor. The peasants he salutes in the style of a peasant, harsh, dour, and as the journalists say 'honest!' . . . He does not promise them that the State will make their fortunes, but that, if they work the State will do what it can to help them. . . . The peasants, I think, do not show displeasure when they refer to him as un furbo, 'a crafty fellow.' He is, indeed, very, very astute."
Richelieu's Condition. "Italians love a display of emotion to an extent the English would regard as disgusting," continues Dr. Finer. "Hence the task of government has been, is, and always will be different in Italy from in England. . . . In the apt American phrase, Mussolini is a spellbinder. . . . Yet Mussolini is more controlled, more disposed to reticence, less expansive than the average Italian. He is imperious and detached. . . . He has a solid, crag-like passivity when listening, and even when speaking, that is particularly imposing in a land where all are volatile and throbbing. He gives the impression that confidence will be well placed in him, and power turned to good uses. . . . It is this un-Italian steadiness which marks him off from the rest.
"Another quality that distinguishes the Dictatorship of Mussolini is his exceptionally wide knowledge of science and philosophy. . . . There are some people too vain to seek advice; Mussolini seeks it wherever it may be found, and therefore fulfills Richelieu's condition of wisdom and character in a statesman. . . . He is the world's most accomplished plagiarist.
"Thirdly, Mussolini has, and gives the impression of having, a complete contempt for material rewards, money, comfort. . . . Mussolini comes from poverty, preaches poverty, and remains poor. Yes; his devotion to Italy, and only Italy, is as unmistakable as it is absolute. . . . There must be no personal loyalties, no promises, no doctrinal consistency, nor anything else that conflicts with the destiny of a greater Italy. There are some men who cannot desert the friends of yesterday for the sake of their country. Mussolini is not one of these."
Beatitude & Pflichtgefühl. Continuing the most scholarly and minute analysis of the Dictator yet made, Dr. Finer reports: "He is certain of his star, certain that he cannot be assassinated until his work is accomplished, certain that Italy needs him, certain that his institutions are wholesome for Italy . . . certain that he cannot fail. . . . The impact of his personality on men, women and children far from the vicinity of Mussolini's physical presence is astounding. Far away, even to the uttermost confines of the kingdom, beyond the hills and fields and marshes separating them from Rome, even beyond the ocean, the charm works. A businesslike Party official, hearing that I was to visit the Duce, exclaimed enraptured 'Oh, thou in beatitude!'
'In . . . power of steady hard work, and the capacity to organize and direct a routine of government . . . Mussolini has made . . . an example to the rest of a nation which has not the steady energy of the English, nor the intense, if sometimes wasteful, energy of the American, nor the exacting Pflichtgefühl of the Germans. . . . [Mussolini's] extraordinary laborious life is founded upon the robust vitality and physique of a burly, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, rather short, well-knit athletic person.
"To all these characteristics," adds Scholar Finer, "Mussolini unites personal fascination. . . . His presence is exciting, disturbing, and, finally, commanding. People feel simply that they must obey. . . .
"Mussolini's personal fascination is accompanied by a sense of distance between him and his followers. . . . He is not a 'good fellow.' While he is not sullen, he is withdrawn. He is not a handshaker. Hence the impulse to substitute [for handshaking] the Roman salute. . . .All these gifts have won a crown for Mussolini; guarantee his omnipotence; render it as beneficial as a Dictatorship can be."
Even so, Dr. Finer is against Dictatorship, whether Fascist, Nazi or Communist, and democratic readers may close his tome prouder of Democracy and of themselves than ever.
Bullets in Their Tails. With II Duce, for better or worse, occupying his present crucial position on the fulcrum of European peace or war, the Mussolini family last week was proceeding steadily about business as usual.
Slightly cross-eyed youngest-son Romano Mussolini was at school, tricked out in the sissy Italian variant of an Eton collar (see cut). His little sister Anna Maria, the first child of the Dictator to bear "a good Catholic name," pursued her studies in the same class and both were cared for by fat, completely self-effacing Donna Rachele Mussolini who is her husband's idea of the perfect Italian wife. Above suspicion, she dwells most of the time in northern Italy, visited by her Caesar in a spirit of duty, which gives way at times to happy comradeship of an evening in the flickering glow of oil lamps on their farm.
Edda, the Dictator's favorite child, gave her chubby husband, young Count Galeazzo Ciano, to the war in its earliest phase and he dropped upon Aduwa from his battle plane the historic bombs which began the conflict. Also airmen at the front are the Dictator's two elder sons, Vittorio and Bruno, and last week, after dropping bombs, each received Ethiopian bullets in the tail of his plane for the first time.
Not their father's pals, but driven and inspired to a diligence typically Fascist, Vittorio and Bruno stand in the Dictators awful "distance." It was not of himself, not of his flesh & blood but of his supremely cherished Italy, which he wills to make a Great Power, that Benito Mussolini lately vowed in addressing his Fascist Senate: "No one can take upon himself the intolerable presumption to dictate to us."
* Mussolini, like Victoria, is also a prude. He abolishes brothels, puts Italian showgirls into modest garments, extinguishes Rome's once brilliant night life, does not drink, smoke or eat meat.
† Too involved and tenuous for most laymen is Italy's claim that she has not violated the Covenant, but not so easily brushed aside is her claim that she did not violate the Kellogg Pact. In adhering to the Pact she claims the same reservations as were made by Britain, in effect that the Pact does not bind where the signatory is obliged to take measures in one of its "spheres of vital interest." Absurd on its face but capable of being upheld years hence by some august tribunal of international lawyers is Italy's claim that the Pact, as interpreted by onetime Secretary of State Frank Billings Kellogg permits almost any act of "self defense" and that Italy did not formally open her campaign against Ethiopia until after the Ethiopian mobilization order.
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